Syrians struggle with lack of oil during war

In Moscow, Syria’s Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi denied recent U.S. charges that Syrian troops used chemical weapons against the rebels, saying Washington had leveled the accusation as a result of the latest victories by the army.

“The American hysteria about the use of chemical weapons was caused by the success of the Syrian Arab Army in striking terrorists,” al-Zoubi was quoted by state TV as saying. The government refers to rebels as “terrorists.”

The Obama administration said Thursday that intelligence indicates that government forces likely used the nerve gas sarin in two attacks.

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LONDON — In an open field northeast of the Syrian city of Aleppo, teenagers set fires under large vats of crude oil and siphon the byproducts into storage cans.

The scene, captured on footage and uploaded onto YouTube, shows a young man walking around fires and through smoke near the town of Al Bab, explaining the production of mazut, used for home heating, and diesel at his homemade refinery.

“Of course, it's dangerous,” the young man says with a shrug and a half smile. None of the children, some as young as 5 or 6, wears any kind of protective gear.

Two years after the start of the uprising against President Bashar Assad, “significantly more” than 4 million Syrians are homeless, short of food and reliant on aid within the country, while 1.1 million have fled abroad, the United Nations says. Syria's oil exports, which once provided a quarter of all government revenue or about $3 billion a year, have almost completely ended.

“Oil is the only thing that Syria has going for it,” says Joshua Landis, who runs the Middle East program at the University of Oklahoma. “Farming has collapsed, and that is why we are seeing this outflow of refugees. They are starving; they don't have the basics to sustain them.”

The European Union eased an oil embargo to allow crude exports from rebel-held territory on April 22, saying it sought to promote the economy in opposition-controlled areas. Even so, it's unclear who controls the oil fields and whether shipments can be resumed.

“There is also little proof the national coalition has much oil under its control,” said David Butter, associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa program at London-based Chatham House.

The fields of the east and northeast are in areas where Islamist militants predominate, the Economist Intelligence Unit said in a report on Wednesday.

“The majority of the fields are controlled by al-Qaida; some by the Free Army; some others by the Kurds,” said Rami Abdurrahman of the Coventry, England-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. “We cannot confirm what percentage each controls.”

Syria's Cabinet denounced the EU move on Tuesday as an attempt to buy “terrorist” oil and said no one would be allowed to steal the country's resources. A month earlier, Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Suleiman al-Abbas met the Russian and Chinese ambassadors to discuss oil and gas exploration and development, the state-run SANA agency said.

The lifting of the EU embargo will allow crude exports from rebel-held territory, the import of oil and gas production technology, and investments in the Syrian oil industry. Syria began issuing concessions to oil companies in the 1930s, when it was run by the French, and production began in the late 1960s. Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron and Total were among companies working in ventures with the state-run Syrian Petroleum Co. before the war.

In other footage, men are seen collecting output from the homemade refineries in Darat Izza, northwest of Aleppo city, their efforts filmed and uploaded to Syria Video, a website funded by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

Against a backdrop of olive trees and rocky hills, a man in an open shirt and jacket details his prices: Benzene fetches 11,000 Syrian pounds ($157) per barrel and mazut 12,500-13,000 Syrian pounds.

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